Obama: Negotiations After Bills; Is There An End In Sight?; Boy Flies Cross Country Alone; Disney Theme Park Under Fire

Aired October 9, 2013 - 07:30 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Okay, so let's give it 24 hours, right? One thing is, the immediate reaction, let's give it 24 hours. I'm sure he's hearing from his caucus. I'm sure they're looking at what President Obama said. I saw a little give in what he said.

NAVARRO: I saw a little give in what President Obama said. He's saying with, yes, I will accept short term C.R. and he's also saying I will talk about anything you want. So look, if he doesn't want to negotiate about re-opening the government, then why don't they sit down and negotiate about what they're going to negotiate. Put a little specific on the table.

HILL: I think that's another thing to be upset about -- another thing to disagree about. Every time they have a conversation about specifics things get messy.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: They'll have to get there at some point though, Marc.

HILL: But I don't think the issue over tax reform, over deficit reduction will be nearly as ugly as this Obamacare thing. What the GOP has done masterfully is now change the target. We've been talking about defunding Obamacare. People like Paul Ryan are saying we want to talk about reducing the deficit. When we get to the deficit, they'll smuggle Obamacare in again and once this happens, the short- term deal may be over with no progress.

BOLDUAN: When it comes to the olive branch, the glimmer of hope, the itty-bitty opening we may have seen from the president, is that in part a response to something he may have backed himself into a corner and say he's not negotiating. Republicans, how many e-mails can I get from every Republican saying look at all of the times that the debt ceiling and government funding has been the impetus for negotiating? HILL: Yes, it's not unprecedented for a president to be backed into a corner or forced to deal with negotiation. It's never been on a piece of legislation like Obamacare. That's the thing the president was standing firm on. He never had an issue with reform.

NAVARRO: I also think it's a result of public perception and public outcry. The longer this goes, the more impatient the American people become and they are becoming impatient with everybody. Yes, the Republicans taking a slightly bigger hit? Yes. But that doesn't mean that the Democrats -- you may laugh.

HILL: They deserve a bigger hit. They've been completely incredulous.

CHRIS CUOMO: The point is --

NAVARRO: My point is that everybody -- but yesterday cockroaches were more popular than Congress.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: It's interesting to me, I think about the optics of it all. The folks at home are so frustrated. We're frustrated sitting. The pain is so very real. We've told stories here about how real it is. Yet all of this keeps going back on --

NAVARRO: When I walk into an airport, I'm just a Republican on TV. People yell at me. So I pick up the phone and yell at them. I say, look --

BOLDUAN: They're just as frustrated.

NAVARRO: When I get on TV, when people say go listen to the American public, Democrats say the public is saying this and Republicans say they're saying that. I don't know what echo chamber they live in. I live in the actual world, not a red world or blue world. I can tell you that people are angry out there.

PEREIRA: Are they that far removed that they don't understand and don't feel it?

CUOMO: They think people forget.

HILL: People have short memories. That's what they're banking on. What they're missing is the fact that people are suffering every day. We hear about a salmonella outbreak and the CDC isn't at full strength. If something should wake them up, that should.

BOLDUAN: Do you think Paul Ryan's piece in the "Wall Street Journal" might be the beginning of that? He's so well respected, seen as a hero of fiscal conservatives. No mention in that opinion piece of the elephant in the room, Obamacare. Do you think -- he's been really quiet to this point. Do you think this is his moment when he's coming out to say, all right, we've had enough? Now let's get smart.

NAVARRO: Yes. I think it's a recurring role you're going to see from Paul Ryan where he's not out there flapping his gums about the issue, but he's working behind the scenes to get something actually done. And he is a very serious guy, respected by a broad base of the Republican caucus. Not one faction, not another. He's also been able to work across the aisle in the past. And that "Wall Street Journal" piece, he quotes his work in the past with Ron White and not exactly a red state Democrat.

HILL: Yes.

NAVARRO: So yes, you know, Paul Ryan would be a perfect person --

HILL: Two things have to happen for that to work. One, Obamacare has to stay off the table. Again "The Wall Street Journal" piece doesn't mention Obamacare. If that becomes the focus and it's a real reasonable solution to deficit reduction through raising revenue and cutting spending, that's great. But the other thing is Boehner has to stop looking over his shoulder for the Tea Party to make sure they are OK --

CUOMO: You got to see who is in your tent. You know, you can blame Boehner for taking into consideration the full influence. The president has to do the same thing because plenty of his members of his party are worried about where this is going. That's called politics. This debt ceiling, we're about to have Dr. Coburn come on here, the senator.

He's going to stay stop talking about all this bad stuff that's going to happen. It's not going to happen. Whether we raise the ceiling or not, we're going to pay, that's dangerous talk. We're going to get into it on television. I'm just a reporter. What do you make, Anna, of that theme bubbling up out of the party? You know, this credit stuff, this is bogus, scare tactics. That's dangerous talk.

NAVARRO: Look, I think most Republicans agree that fiddling around with the debt ceiling and not needing the debt ceiling and deadline is a very dangerous.

CUOMO: One of your leaders is about to come on saying that's not true.

NAVARRO: Well, but you know, listen, we have seen diversity of thought in the Republican Party --

HILL: Not diversity of facts.

NAVARRO: That's what I'm calling it.

HILL: We don't pay our bills we'll still be OK? That is trying to manage a crisis. That is completely ridiculous. The bond markets haven't dropped yet because people are hopeful that Republicans and Democrats aren't entirely insane. If this continues, we're going to have some serious problems.

NAVARRO: In Paul Ryan's piece that Kate just mentioned one of the things he talks about is that it is frequent for president to negotiate with the debt ceiling in the past, including President Obama who did it two years ago, including President Clinton who did it, came up with an agreement with Newt Gingrich, including Ronald Reagan who did it with Democrats.

HILL: This is a real crisis.

NAVARRO: You hear me on the enormity of any crisis.

HILL: I'm anticipating what's going to happen in a few minutes.

CUOMO: Stick around and watch.

NAVARRO: That's impressive.

BOLDUAN: As always, great to have you guys on. Thank you, thank you.

CUOMO: The best mirror for this is what you think. So please tweet us with #newday. Let us know where your heads and hearts are on this debate because that's where we are moving forward more than anything else that anybody said.

NAVARRO: Tweet your congressmen. They're all on Twitter.

BOLDUAN: Many of them actually read those things.

Coming up next on NEW DAY, the father of the boy who snuck on to a flight to Las Vegas, well, he's defending his family and saying they don't have -- they may not have an angel for a son, but we'll tell you where he thought his son was, ahead.

CUOMO: Plus, listen to this one, Disney stops letting the disabled cut the line at rides. Why would they do something like that? Well, it turns out some people were beating the system. Was it really so bad that everyone had to suffer? We'll take a look. You decide.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: You have to move to the beat.

PEREIRA: This is your jam.

BOLDUAN: Hi there, everybody. Welcome back to NEW DAY. Let's get straight over to Indra Petersons in the weather center for a little more of what you need to know before you head out the door this morning, my dear.

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Did I hear you try to teach Chris how to have rhythm? Did I miss that?

BOLDUAN: Ouch.

CUOMO: I can dance.

PETERSONS: I heard you got to move to the beat, Chris. I heard it. All right, definitely looking at this cold arctic air still in place, in fact, each day will be a little bit cooler moving forward. So take a look at D.C. This is the one that you are really going to feel it, 63 today will be your high. Average is 71. Tomorrow your highs will be just into the upper 50s and by Thursday, high of just 58 degrees. So that's pretty much the story in the northeast.

Down to the southeast, we have a rainmaker. We have a low kind of hugging the coast and as it moves up the coastline, you're going to be talking about rain even into the northeast by the end of the week so really affecting the entire eastern seaboard.

Today, it's kind of in the Carolinas and around the mid-Atlantic and then by the end of the week in the northeast. Other big story, high pressure still building in so temperatures well above normal into the Midwest and out in the Pacific Northwest, another storm making its way through, maybe some snow at mammoth lakes, temperatures 15 to 20 degrees below normal.

Where it's beautiful, yes, the Midwest gets to be the big winner. Temperatures 15, it's not 20 degrees above normal into the (inaudible). So it is nice somewhere today, just the middle of the country, like you said, for you.

BOLDUAN: Thanks, Indra.

PETERSONS: Sure.

CUOMO: All right, we've been following a story about this 9-year-old stowaway. Remember the boy found his way past multiple checkpoints, flew from Minnesota to Las Vegas, all alone. Now the boy's father is speaking out calling his son a charmer, but that isn't the half of it.

CNN's George Howell is in Minneapolis with the very latest. Good morning, George.

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chris, good morning. What a story, I mean, for more than six days he's been gone from home, but we now know that whatever happens in Vegas he will not stay in Vegas. A source with knowledge of the situation tells me that he will be returning here to Minneapolis and his father who's anxious to see him says his son does have a history that he's no angel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not giving up on my son. He is just confused.

HOWELL (voice-over): An emotional father of a 9-year-old boy speaking out for the first time after his son slipped through TSA security cracks and sneaked on to a Delta flight from the Minneapolis St. Paul airport to Las Vegas without a ticket.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't have an angel, OK? I have a 9-year-old. To me he's got a behavior problem.

HOWELL: The boy whose father says he's a charmer has been in protective custody in Nevada for the last six days.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know what to do. I love my son.

HOWELL: Passing through the security checkpoints of TSA screening, an airport spokesman says surveillance video shows the child boarding the plane while the Delta agent was distracted. The father claims he's been asking for behavioral help since his son was 5.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anyone, please, help me. Please.

HOWELL: According to a report by the Minneapolis "Star Tribune," the director of the Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health Department says there have been four child protection assessments on the boy's family since 2012.

In an e-mail obtained by the paper, the agency's director, Jeneen Moore, described the boy as, quote, "challenging." And says he stole a car and was arrested on Highway 35 just weeks ago. Finally, there are allegations concerning a troubled past. Moore in her e-mail wrote that the boy claimed his mother once held a knife to his throat and that his mother was, quote, "stabbed and died."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not bad parents.

HOWELL: His mother has not spoken publicly yet, but a source close to the investigation confirms to CNN that she works at the airport.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOWELL: We have been working to try to backstop some of that information you heard. CNN reached out to the Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health Department to try to confirm some of the information in that report but so far, they are not commenting, Chris, Kate, on the content of that e-mail obtained by the newspaper.

BOLDUAN: A shocking story. George, thank you so much. Let's talk more about this. What does this lapse in security tell us about the security at our nation's airports? Should we be concerned? What can they learn from it? What can we learn from it?

Let's bring in CNN national security analyst, Fran Townsend, to talk more about it. So Fran, we're learning more about how this played out. You see the boy talking to a gate agent. She seems to get -- they seem to get distracted and that seems to be the event right before he got on the plane. Do we know who really who finally dropped the ball? This is the learning experience that we should be taking from this.

FRANCES FRAGOS TOWNSEND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: You know, it's still pretty unclear, Kate. The gate agent gets distracted. There was another opportunity to catch up with this boy, because, of course, the flight attendants do a head count on the plane before and they match it to the manifest to make sure the numbers match. Somebody didn't do that, right?

Because even though the gate agent got distracted, there was never a match between the head count with the manifest because they would have picked up there. So look, we don't know where the mother worked in the airport, did she work inside the security perimeter or outside? This boy, probably wasn't the first time at the airport with his mom when she was working.

That's right. People may have been familiar with this little boy. It sounds like this boy does have behavioral problems, right? So what sort of assistance have they gotten? Why didn't anybody notice? Why didn't mother or father notice this boy was missing over a long period of time?

You know, look, I have kids. When my kids are going someplace, I talk to the parents or the parents there call me when you get there, call me when you're leaving, right? Why wasn't more attention paid to this little boy when he went missing.

PEREIRA: Well, it's interesting. Dad describes him as charming. Others might say cunning. But it does point to a concern, a cunning adult, if this child can get by several points of security, a distracted ticket taker, whatever, could a cunning adult do the same thing? That's where people are freaking out.

TOWNSEND: That's right. And Michaela, I think that's a legitimate question. Now I think we have to be -- in fairness to everybody involved, TSA, the gate agent, the flight attendant, you tend to be more mate maternal, you know, protective of the child unless they're suspicious.

PEREIRA: True.

TOWNSEND: I think probably that worked to this kid's advantage. It's the right question to ask.

PEREIRA: Even the maternal things seemed to fail.

CUOMO: They wound up giving him a pass because he didn't trigger their suspicions on one level, but they didn't do him any favors by letting him go unattended. I think, look, what's the problem with this situation? There's a lack of accountability.

TOWNSEND: That's right.

CUOMO: They're failing at rule one. You made a mistake. Own it because the confidence in you is hurt, not by the perceived wrong, but by the cover-up, the lack of accountability. Be open and honest, this is embarrassing. We're going to fix it. We can. The kid is an entirely different situation.

The father was quoted as saying I called the police, said help me with this. They said you need to discipline your child. If I discipline him anymore, you'd be arresting me. Now here's a very fundamental problem that we deal with kids and families all the time is whether you parent.

Why is this kid doing this? Discipline means teaching the kid to learn how to follow. This kid, nobody has connected with him. It has nothing to do with the TSA. There's a whole separate issue going on with this kid. He happens to be very smart.

PEREIRA: There are behavioral issues.

BOLDUAN: Do you think the TSA are taking a step back to re-assess after this or are they simply saying this is a one off that shouldn't have happened? There are other issues involved here. Don't take this as something we need to learn from.

TOWNSEND: That's Chris' point. I think that's right. The TSA seems to be saying this is a one off. The gate agent missed it. That's Delta's problem. It's a parent problem and that's where people lack confidence in their government. They say, wait a minute, why don't you want to look at this and why don't you want to understand this. If it had been a cunning adult, could they have gotten passed? I'd really think it's a misstep on TSA's part.

BOLDUAN: Thank you so much, Fran.

TOWNSEND: Sure. Good to see you.

CUOMO: Same thing from the family on TSA on this one. They're saying --

BOLDUAN: We've done everything we can. Not our fault.

CUOMO: Coming up on NEW DAY, Disney tells disabled people get back in line. Is that fair? We'll tell you where the real problem lies, straight ahead, and then you judge for yourself.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Welcome back to NEW DAY. OK, are you ready for this? Disney is telling disabled visitors to its parks to get back in line. They used to allow the disabled instant access to rides. OK, are they being mean? No, here's what turns out. Some ethically challenged guests were abusing that policy. That's what Disney says. So now Disney is making it harder for everyone as a result. Is that fair?

Let's bring in Elizabeth Cohen at the CNN Center with this situation. What do we make of this, Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know what, Chris? You can really see both sides of this situation. Disney says they don't want people cheating anymore, but the families say that this change in policy could ruin their dream vacations.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COHEN (voice-over): For months the Kilpatrick family had been excitedly planning a dream vacation for their daughter, Kyra. Back in June, they bought tickets to the happiest place on earth.

KARIN KILPATRICK, MOTHER: I like to give her a chance to remember Disneyland as a fun place.

COHEN: But now they're worried it may not be fun at all. Starting today, Disneyland and Disneyworld will no longer allow visitors with disabilities instant access to rides. And that's a problem for Kyra who has a rare genetic scored called "PCDH-19." That leads to seizures and autism.

KILPATRICK: I'm nervous. This may not be much of a vacation for us. COHEN: Long waits between rides can be a disaster for kids with her condition. Disney is making the change after widespread reports of able-bodied people abusing the policy including some wealthy park visitors who reportedly hired disabled people to pretend to be family members so they could skip lines.

In a statement Disney said, "We are modifying our current program so we can continue to serve the guests who truly need it and for whom it was intended."

KILPATRICK: Disney is just saying, you know, we'll accommodate you, talk to us when you get here. Trust us and that's -- I can't plan for that. I don't know how it's going to work.

COHEN: But the family says they're still worried Kyra will get sick and have to leave. They're still going to give it a try. They already sunk $1,500 in non-refundable costs. They're hoping they'll see joy on Kyra's face as she enjoys rides.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COHEN: Now on their blog, Disney says that guests with disabilities will receive a return time for attractions under the new policy. But families say, look, that's not very clear. We don't know what it means or how it will work. They say it sounds like big waits will still be in store for them -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Elizabeth, thank you very much. That's a tough one.

BOLDUAN: Coming up next on NEW DAY, finally, maybe some signs of the compromise as the debt ceiling gets closer and closer. Coming up, the olive branch from President Obama, do Republicans think it is real and is it enough?

CUOMO: And we are staying on that vicious biker attack for you. There are new arrests including a member of the NYPD. He said he did nothing wrong. Authorities say he's wrong. We'll show you why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The American people do not get to demand a ransom for doing their jobs. That's not how our negotiations work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: True cost of the shutdown. Families of troops killed in action not getting benefits, tens of thousands of furloughed workers on unemployment. Will it force the two sides to start negotiating?

BOLDUAN: Historic shift, the U.S. now set to pull much of its aid to Egypt, the two allies drifting apart. What it means for the region? PEREIRA: Full of fear, parents, teachers and students believe this Malibu school is giving them cancer. Four diagnosed already. They speak out to us.

CUOMO: Your NEW DAY continues right now.

ANNOUNCER: What you need to know --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: I didn't come here to shutdown the government. I certainly didn't come here to default on our debt.

ANNOUNCER: What you just have to see.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were transferred to the ambulance, she looked at me and asked if she could -- we could drive it to the wedding.